'Pacifist' Allies and the Afghan War

Published: October 29, 2007

To the Editor:

Re ''Time for the Bundesmacht'' (column, Oct. 25):

I take strong issue with Roger Cohen's call for Germany to cease its pacifist stance and join what I consider American aggression in Afghanistan. We should, instead, admire the fact that the military powers that started World War II, Germany and Japan, are now pacifist.

Calling on pacifist countries like Germany to escalate their military activity is just a continuation of the American strategy to convert the crime of 9/11 into a justification for putting the entire world back into a state of permanent war.

Thankfully, the sensible Germans are resisting. Japan's reluctance to scrap its pacifist Constitution is equally encouraging. The only thing we should lament is the insistence of the United States government that other countries abandon their pacifism.

Why can't the United States recognize that even if Germany were to help, it cannot conquer and control the Middle East? In fact, the United States cannot control one city in Iraq or Afghanistan. More American military aggression will bring only more death and destruction.

Germany, we are thankful for your courage to say no to the Bush war machine. Hendrik Van den Berg

Lincoln, Neb., Oct. 25, 2007

To the Editor:

Roger Cohen wants Germany, Italy and Spain to play a more active combat role in Afghanistan, attributing reluctance to pacifism. This is just a thinly veiled questioning of the moral character of NATO allies and overlooks more fundamental strategic reasons America's friends hold back:

It is America's war. While NATO and other allies backed the decision to go after Al Qaeda after 9/11, the subsequent decision to invade and occupy has never been fully endorsed. The rest of the world long ago learned the perils of nation-building in Afghanistan.

It is not clear that America is fully focused on its objectives. Opening up a second front in Iraq when the job was far from done in Afghanistan was a huge diversion of resources, undertaken without NATO buy-in.

Unilateralism is not a good strategy when asking allies to make sacrifices for a cause they already doubt. It is clear that much of Europe, including Germany, is far more concerned about threats associated with the environment than threats associated with Afghanistan. America has been unwilling to engage with these concerns on either a symbolic or a practical level.

NATO allies are democracies, and America's international posture in recent years has alienated the voting public in these countries, creating an unfavorable political climate for full military commitment to American objectives.

When America gets sufficiently serious in its foreign policy to allocate appropriate resources to achievable objectives and is willing to make concessions to the priorities and sensibilities of its allies, it will find it much easier to achieve both practical and popular support.

In the meantime, America must live with the consequences of unilateralism. Whining is unedifying in a great power.

Robert King

Brookfield, Australia, Oct. 26, 2007

To the Editor:

It is ''past time,'' Roger Cohen writes, ''for continental Europe to overcome its pacifist mirage and accept that these are dangerous times demanding serious defense budgets and sacrifice.''

Perhaps. At any rate, it is certainly long past time for the United States to overcome its self-regard and accept that the illegality, aggressiveness and corruption (much of it hidden in those ''serious defense budgets'') of American foreign policy have made the world and the times far more dangerous than a humane and law-abiding foreign policy would have done. George Scialabba